Last update - 00:00 06/12/2007
Gaza gas station owners won't accept reduced fuel supply from Israel
By DPA
A strike staged by the owners of Gaza gasoline stations entered its fifth day Thursday, deepening a fuel crisis that has been gradually emptying the coastal strip's streets of cars and taxis.
The gasoline stations are striking to protest an Israeli cut in fuel supplies to the Hamas-ruled Strip aimed at curbing daily rocket and mortar attacks from the area on southern Israel.
Israel first began cutting its supply of fuel to Gaza on October 28, and has continued to do so after the High Court of Justice on Friday rejected a petition filed by human rights groups demanding it declare the move illegal.
The court on Sunday ordered the state to delay its reduction of electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip by at least one week, pending a full presentation detailing the proposed operation. The justices, however, upheld the state's plan to reduce fuel transfers to the Strip, as long as the humanitarian needs of Gaza's residents were given primary consideration.
Israel, through its Dor Alon fuel company, continues to supply Gaza with some 90,000 liters of diesel, 25,000 liters of gasoline and 100 tons of natural gas a day.
But, complained Mahmoud al-Khozendar of the Union of Gaza Service Stations, this supply is only one-third of the daily needs of Gaza's population. The union has therefore refused to receive the reduced amounts.
The union announced the strike Sunday, saying it did not want to be accomplices to Israel's "punishing the Palestinian people."
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused the union Thursday of deepening the crisis by refusing the fuel.
Mujahed Salama, the director of the Palestinian Authority-run Palestinian Petrol Association in Ramallah, said about one million liters of diesel and 300,000 liters of gasoline had amassed at the association's storehouses.
"The problem is with the service stations which went on strike and refused to receive their shares," Salama said in a statement sent to reporters.
"The rejection to obtain the fuel widens the crisis," he said.
According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, the Gaza Strip has some 145 gasoline stations, most of which have shut down.
Residents said traffic in Gaza City's streets is getting scarcer by the day and more and more people are walking to work and to school. More and more taxi drivers have also stopped working, as they have run out of stored supplies.
Late Thursday the gas station owners said they would reopen on a limited basis. It was not immediately clear what led them to change their minds.
Israel has not reduced the amounts of crude diesel, used by ambulances and fire engines.
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